It's kind of disturbing but I found out about this through a myspace bulletin:


Emerson Bell passed on in the last day or so of some sort of lung problems. If you are from baton rouge, you may know him as the kooky old jazz cat type dude rambling on about some crazy shit in the coffee shop. Or you may know him a little better and know that he was an accomplished artist in many mediums: painting, printmaking, sculpting, I'm not sure what else. I met him through the jobs I had, first waiting on him at Caliban's, then Perk's, then Kinko's. He was sometimes hard to deal with as a customer, he had very exacting standards of quality, and sometimes he'd just be talking on about something to you when there were like 5 people behind him, but he was just as often funny as fuck and made me smile. He often told me how he had known Coltrane and Sun Ra, I'm not sure how much of everything he said was true, but it was always entertaining. He knew i was a DJ and often brought up the name "doctor daddio", his favorite DJ from back in the day.

anyhow, I just thought I'd pass it on. He was a unique dude and he will be missed. I thought he was going to live forever, really.


Here's the only pictures of him I could find, from an opening at the BR Gallery.
Here's Adam Wilson's eulogy, which is very funny and more interesting than this post.